Halifax dumps Howard from its TV ads because he's too jolly for a recession | Daily Mail Online Halifax dumps Howard from its TV ads because he's too jolly for a recession comments For the past eight years his jolly sing and dance routine has either cheered you up or driven you mad with irritation. But now Howard Brown, the bespectacled star of the Halifax television adverts, looks like being another victim of the credit crunch. The bank has decided that in the current gloomy economic climate his adverts are too cheerful. Since 2000 Mr Brown has fronted Halifax's adverts as part of the 'staff as stars' campaign. Too upbeat: Howard Brown will no longer be the face of Halifax because it wants a more serious tone to reflect current economic problems The commercials feature ordinary staff members performing song and dance routines with lyrics doctored to advertise Halifax products. Even though they were routinely voted the most annoying adverts on TV, they, and Mr Brown, have endured. Mr Brown, 42, who was originally a cashier at a branch in Sheldon near Birmingham, made his break singing a reworked version of Tom Jones' 'Sex Bomb'.

He appeared in seven more adverts for Halifax including singing 'I'll give you extra' to the tune of 'Angel' by pop star Shaggy. Howard feels the crunch: Apparently surfing in a suit and riding a giant bird isn't quite so amusing in these tough financial times In one bizarre advert he straddled a giant swan while in another he sent up Gene Kelly's 'Singing in the rain' umbrella dance routine. He quickly became a household name and was turned into a waxwork model by Madame Tussauds. Halifax had so much faith in their 'brand ambassador' they even turned him into a computer generated character to give the bank a friendlier image. Now he is facing the sack after Halifax reviewed their advertising contract. Even though the bank awarded it to the same agency that conjured the 'staff for stars' campaign, an internal review concluded its marketing should be more serious.

Ambassador: Mr Brown, 42, has been the face of the bank for eight years since winning a talent show among employees for the role Dan Shute, the director of the Halifax account at DLKW, said: "The financial world is very different in 2008 to the one that we started working with in the year 2000, so a change was necessary. "But it would be wrong to suggest that this is a reassurance campaign from Halifax - it's just recognising that times have changed." If the 'staff for stars' campaign is axed it throws into doubt the showbiz careers of other Halifax employees who have been catapulted to stardom. Natalie Webster, 29, appeared in a version of Aretha Franklin's 'Think' while Thomas Yau, 25, plucked from a Halifax call centre in Leeds, was in the most recent ad. Both have now returned to their regular jobs. Mr Brown, who has made a cameo appearance in the BBC2 series 'The Office', could now pursue more TV work - or return to the cashier's desk.

Ride is over: Halifax will now be taking a more serious approach to its campaign HBOS, which owns Halifax, could use a little cheer itself. Last month it revealed pre tax profits had plunged 72% in the first six months of 2008 to £848m The company also endured a 36% rise in bad debts to £1.31bn in the first half as hard-pressed customers struggled with repayments. Yesterday a spokesman refused to deny Mr Brown had been dismissed. He said: "We are looking into developing a new advertising campaign and it is too early to say what will be in it. "It will be more about evolution rather than revolution." Mr Brown was unavailable for comment, but the news will hit him hard. He once said: "Being in the advertising campaign has changed my life tremendously. I sometimes feel like a popstar. People recognise me everywhere I go.' The lavish party where the fate of HBOS was sealed | The Independent Business News The lavish party where the fate of HBOS was sealed The setting was an 18th-century palace. The guests were some of the City's biggest names &ndash; and Gordon Brown. The outcome was a deal that stunned the markets.

By David Prosser and Andrew Grice Wednesday 17 September 2008 23:00 BST Click to follow The Independent Online The gag was doing the rounds in the City by mid-morning yesterday. Here's Lloyds TSB's new logo, the email said. The attachment showed the famous Lloyds black horse being ridden by a miserable-looking Howard Brown, the Halifax Bank employee who has fronted its advertising for eight years. This was the fate of HBOS: within the space of just 48 hours, a banking group with almost 560 years of history had become the latest victim of the biggest financial crisis since the Great Depression and a laughing stock on the internet to boot. It was a fate HBOS's most senior staff knew was inevitable as dawn broke yesterday, but even Andy Hornby and Lord Stevenson, the bank's chief executive and chairman, did not realise how quickly the storm would break. True, the morning press made grim reading, reporting the second crash in as many days for HBOS shares and the mounting speculation – despite the protestations of the Financial Services Authority, the chief City regulator, and the bank itself – that it would not survive.

But HBOS knew it was not in the same boat as Northern Rock, with funding in place for the foreseeable future. Yet within half an hour of the stock market opening, everyone could see the game was up. For a few hopeful minutes, the bank's shares rallied, as the market took brief comfort from the US Federal Reserve's $85bn overnight bailout of AIG. And then they fell faster than ever. By 8.30am, the shares were down more than 50 per cent. Worse, this was not a collapse being driven primarily by hedge-fund speculators. Around the country, stockbrokers who deal on behalf of small retail investors began reporting their systems in meltdown as the 2.1 million middle England householders who own little parcels of HBOS shares tried to sell their holdings. Those small shareholders form a large part of HBOS's customer base – and they were busy too phoning the bank's call centres. As HBOS branches opened their doors, the Treasury, the Financial Services Authority and the Bank of England faced Groundhog Day. A year after Northern Rock's collapse, another terrifying run on a bank was imminent.

And so the call went out from Downing Street: we will not let HBOS go the way of the Rock, there's a deal coming and there's no need for anyone to panic. That call was answered by one of the few men with the power to dam the floodwaters heading HBOS's way, the BBC's business editor, Robert Peston. In minutes, Mr Peston was on air, revealing breathlessly that Lloyds TSB was riding over the hills to save the day. The message flashed across City dealing screens at 9.16am, and HBOS shares rocketed – from a low of 88p to 214p. Halifax customers got the message too. A run had been averted. The sighs of relief in the City and Whitehall were audible. In fact, this was a deal that had been brokered at the highest levels for much of the previous 48 hours, with officials at Downing Street and the Treasury terrified history was about to repeat itself. On Monday, fearful of the way the wind was blowing, Lord Stevenson had made the first gentle approach to Sir Victor Blank, the chairman of Lloyds TSB.

Would a deal be doable if the worst came to the worst? Gordon Brown was briefed about the tentative talks on Monday afternoon, and knew he would have an opportunity to discuss the takeover that very evening with Sir Victor. Both men were among the 100 guests of Citibank, whose board was meeting in London, at its reception at Spencer House in St James's, London. The crowded room was not the place for a detailed conversation about such a sensitive issue, but Mr Brown made it clear the Government would do anything it could to ensure financial stability. Sir Victor understood the message – the Prime Minister would find a way to get round the inevitable competition objections Lloyds' rivals would raise once news of a deal with HBOS broke. Having had an encouraging response from Sir Victor, officials close to Mr Brown felt confident enough to speak to Lord Stevenson, who serves as a government adviser on education issues. Late on Monday night, Lord Stevenson and Mr Hornby were still of the view that HBOS might be able to remain independent. They told the Prime Minister's team that further talks with Sir Victor would be welcome, but privately hoped the bank could ride out the storm. It was not to be.

Throughout Tuesday, HBOS shares slid further and the talks between the two banks became more serious. Nevertheless, the leaking of the talks took HBOS and Lloyds by surprise yesterday morning – the negotiations were not officially confirmed until 1.25pm. By 9pm last night, reports confirmed that the deal was done, ready to be formally announced to the City at 7am today, before the stock market opens. Where the deal was done Spencer House, in the heart of St James's, is one of the most ambitious aristocratic town houses ever built. Eight of its lavish state rooms are for hire, and have been frequented by the world's biggest financial organisations – including Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse. Music, flowers and other entertainment are part of the service at the house, which was built in neo-classical style between 1756 and 1766 for the first Earl Spencer. The essential guide for HBOS customers What does the deal mean for HBOS customers? If you're a savings or current account customer with Halifax, Bank of Scotland, Birmingham Midshires or Intelligent Finance, then you can sleep a little easier by knowing that your money's much safer than it was.

Although HBOS was not in any immediate financial difficulty, hedge funds had helped push down the share price, which in turn sparked concern among the customers. If the Government had not moved to encourage a takeover of HBOS, the bank could have faced a full scale-run, at which point the company would have been in severe danger of going bust. Will my money be totally safe with Lloyds? Some banks are simply too big to fail, as the situation with HBOS has demonstrated. At the first sign of a potential crisis of confidence in the bank, the regulators engineered a deal to secure the bank's future. Given that a combined Lloyds and HBOS will be a much bigger entity, it's fairly safe to assume that the Government would not let Lloyds fail either. If that's not assurance enough, then you should remember that the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) guarantees the first £35,000 of your savings if a UK bank goes under. If you've got more money than this with any single institution, then you could take the precaution of spreading it across a few different organisations. Should I be worried about my savings with Insight Investment and Clerical Medical?

As subsidiaries of HBOS, Insight and Clerical Medical will be included in any takeover deal, and will probably be merged with Scottish Widows, which is owned by Lloyds. This should not be of any concern to customers. Furthermore, Insight, Clerical Medical and Scottish Widows are all covered by the FSCS in the event of insolvency. Pension and life insurance customers would receive 100 per cent of the first £2,000 and then 90 per cent of the remainder. Investment fund customers would receive 100 per cent of the first £30,000 and 90 per cent of the next £20,000. I'm a Lloyds customer. Will I be affected? A takeover of HBOS should not have any negative impact on Lloyds' customers. In the long run, it should even have some positive effects, increasing branch availability for Lloyds' customers. Once the merger is complete, Lloyds will account for more than one in four British current accounts. Will the deal mean anything for Lloyds or HBOS mortgage customers? Not really.

HBOS is the country's biggest lender, and combined with Lloyds, it will have an enormous market share. But if it had gone bust, its customers wouldn't have escaped from having to pay back loans. James Daley, Personal Finance Editor More about: The hard sell: Halifax | Media | The Guardian The hard sell Saturday 9 February 2008 10.16 EST First published on Saturday 9 February 2008 10.16 EST Share on Messenger Close A lunchtime trawl through Facebook reveals that there are now scores of groups started by rational, right-minded folk who despise the Halifax adverts. One, the "Let's Build A Rocket and Send Howard Brown to the Sun", for example, boasts a membership of 80 people while another, the "That fat bird from the Halifax adverts seriously hacks me off!" society has an impressive 136 members. Make that 137. Clearly, it's their policy of using "real" employees in their ads that grates. Well, I say "grates" but what I really mean is makes me want to run amok in the local branch before turning the gun on myself.

First there was Howard Brown and then there was Natalie Webster. Now, step forward Thomas Yau, the chap with the footballer's hairdo. For the record, young Thomas works as one of the banks "consultants" in Leeds and, according to the press release, he had to "beat off over 1,300 other colleagues" to win the role. In the latest instalment, Yau does all the usual stuff you've come to expect from a Halifax ad (bad singing, uncomfortable dancing, publicly shredding his dignity, etc) but still I haven't got a clue what product it is he's trying to flog. Even if I did, though, I wouldn't buy it. You see, what Halifax fails to realise is that these commercials are the sole reason why I will NEVER have an account or a credit card with them. It's not just me. Of my three friends, not one has any dealings with Halifax, purely because of Howard or Natalie or Thomas. If and when they finally send them back to do the job they were employed to do, maybe then we'll sit down and talk money. Until then, they can whistle for my balance transfer.

The credit crisis: 100 questions: Savings | Money | The Guardian Share on Messenger Close Lehmans goes bust, AIG is nationalised, HBOS is rescued - it's been an extraordinary week, and there could be more to come. So, amid the turmoil, what's 100% safe? It's not sexy, it's not racy, but if you're looking for an absolutely copper-bottomed guarantee that your money will be safe, no matter what, then make a beeline for National Savings & Investments. NS&I is the government's savings bank, backed by the Treasury, and unless you have access to the vault at the Bank of England, it's probably the safest place to keep your money in Britain. And if you don't believe us, take it from Stephen Hawking and the other heavyweight celebs that NS&I has recruited for its new TV ad. After all, Hawking knows a thing or two about black holes. The front page of the NS&I website carries the headline "100% security for your money", and in these times of trouble, it seems that anxious savers are taking it at its word.

Money has been piling in to National Savings ever since the Northern Rock debacle; last month it announced it had enjoyed its strongest ever annual sales performance. The price of safety is high. You can usually get better rates elsewhere - and NS&I this week slashed rates on some of its most popular products, including fixed-interest savings certificates, children's bonus bonds and guaranteed-income bonds. But in the current environment, some worried savers won't care that the rates aren't the best you can get. Is your money really absolutely safe? "There is no way you could lose your money," a spokeswoman assured us. In terms of what's on offer, its Easy Access Savings Account has been popular among those looking for a no-hassle, no-frills home for their cash, even though its rates of interest are less than impressive. It is an instant-access account which comes with a cash card that lets you pay in money at post office branches and make withdrawals from ATMs. It can be opened with £100 or more, and has tiered interest rates, paying between 1.85% gross interest (for deposits of between £100 and £999) and 4.4% (£50,000-plus).

Those looking for a better rate of interest might want to consider the NS&I Direct Isa, paying a tax-free 5.3%. The minimum opening deposit is £1,000, and it is aimed at those happy to manage their account by phone and online. If you're a higher-rate taxpayer and/or you're worried that inflation will hang around for a while, it's worth taking a gander at National Savings' index-linked savings certificates. As inflation has surged, so has the attractiveness of these lump-sum savings products. With index-linked savings certificates, the value of your investment increases in line with inflation (as measured by the Retail Prices Index) and earns guaranteed interest on top - with all your returns tax-free. These three- and five-year savings products currently give higher-rate taxpayers a savings rate equivalent to around 9.5%. To get the best return you have to stay in for the full term, although you can get out after one year and still benefit from index-linking and extra interest. You can invest between £100 and £15,000 per issue. The bad news is that rates on some of NS&I's fixed-rate investments were this week hacked by up to 0.75%.

It means the latest issue of children's bonus bonds now pay 3.7%. Those on sale little more than a year ago were paying 5.1%. Nevertheless, if you want to save for a child, and do not want to take risks, these are well worth considering. They are five-year fixed rate products that can be bought by anyone over 16 for a child under 16. You can deposit between £25 and £3,000 in each issue, and all returns are tax-free for both child and parent. The rates on the two- and five-year fixed-interest savings certificates, which offer a guaranteed tax-free return, have fallen to just 2.95%. You would have thought that NS&I would have been quick to crow about how much lovely money it has been pulling in lately. Last year, at the height of the Northern Rock crisis, it was happy to give out this information, but now it appears the government has gagged its savings bank.

"We do have a new policy at NS&I that we will not issue sales figures outside of our quarterly reporting in order not to rock the financial markets," says the spokeswoman, who adds that it is too early to say if the current instability has affected sales. Talking of Northern Rock, thanks to the government's intervention, the Newcastle-based institution is also able to offer its customers a guarantee that any money in its accounts - whether it's £1 or £1m - is 100% secure. However, this is not an open-ended commitment; if and when Northern Rock returns to the private sector, it is likely to be put on to a similar footing as other banks and building societies. Are my savings safe? Lloyds TSB's rescue of Halifax's parent company HBOS - a deal reportedly brokered by the prime minister - suggests there is an implicit state guarantee of the major high street banks, and all the money people have saved with them. In other words, HBOS, HSBC, Barclays and the like are simply too large, and too crucial to the economy, to be allowed to fail. If you follow that logic, big is definitely best. Shouldn't I just put it all under the mattress? Don't go there.

If your cash is nicked, home insurance policies typically pay out somewhere between £500 and £1,000 for stolen money. So what should savers do? Don't put all your eggs in one basket. If you've got a fair bit of cash, spread your savings around a number of different institutions. Check who owns the bank or runs its savings operation. That's because people could be left out of pocket if they have their money in two or more savings providers that happen to be part of the same banking group, which then collapses. If you've got less than £35,000 in an account, you can relax: you will get all your money back. If you have more tied up in one institution, now may be the time to think about finding another home for some of it. Which bank will be the next to get into trouble? That's one of the $64,000 dollar questions! Who, a few weeks ago, would have thought that the mighty HBOS - the Tesco of the banking world - would have to be rescued?

Royal Bank of Scotland's share price has certainly had a torrid time of it, falling by 10% on Tuesday, 10% the next day and 4.5% on Thursday. The Guardian's Nils Pratley wrote on Thursday that RBS "shares some of HBOS's financial characteristics. The size of RBS's loan book exceeds the size of its deposit base - not to the same degree, but the number is still large". But he added that RBS is a bigger, more diversified bank. What happens if my bank or building society goes bust, and will I lose all my money? There is an official rescue fund called the Financial Services Compensation Scheme that protects savers if their bank or building society goes under. Payouts are "per person per bank", and were made more generous following the Northern Rock debacle. If your savings provider goes belly-up, you will now receive the first £35,000 of your savings money back, and there are proposals to raise this to £50,000. The £35,000 limit applies to the total amount held with an organisation, regardless of how many accounts someone has, or whether they are a single or joint account holder.

I have all my savings at Halifax. Are they safe? Probably more so than they were earlier this week. The merger is designed to shore up HBOS and protect the millions of savers who hold a total of £243bn in their accounts. Even if the new combined bank should fail, savers would be protected under the compensation scheme. Prudence suggests that you do not hold more than £35,000 at any one institution. But prudence might also suggest that you think carefully before moving the cash to smaller banks offering better rates. Not all of them will be able to clamber into the lifeboat. I have accounts at both Halifax and Lloyds TSB. What should I do? Until the deal is done and dusted, which could take months, the two banks will continue to be treated as separate institutions, so customers will get protection for the first £35,000 they hold in each. It will be interesting to see what happens when the merger is complete. In the case of Royal Bank of Scotland, which took over NatWest a few years back, most of its banking brands are separately authorised by the Financial Services Authority.

So someone with money in RBS, NatWest, Tesco Personal Finance (which is 50%-owned by RBS) and Coutts would get a separate helping of protection for each of these. Other banks have done things differently. For example, the HBOS group includes Halifax, the Bank of Scotland, Birmingham Midshires and Intelligent Finance. Birmingham Midshires also provides savings accounts for Saga and the AA. At the moment, all six of these brands operate under a single FSA authorisation, which means that if someone had £35,000 in a Halifax account, and the same amount in accounts with Birmingham Midshires, the AA and Saga, and HBOS went bust tomorrow, instead of getting £140,000 compensation, they would only get £35,000. It all sounds horribly complicated ... It is. MPs on the Commons Treasury select committee this week said it is unreasonable to expect customers to know whether their savings provider has an individual or a shared banking licence. They have urged the FSA to look into requiring each banking brand to have its own authorisation. What'll happen to Howard Brown, the singing star of those annoying Halifax ads?

On Thursday, the Sun stuck Brown on its front page and said it was unclear whether he would be keeping his job. The paper rigged up an image of him riding a Lloyds TSB black horse, which might give the ad men some ideas. Only last month, the Star reported that he had been axed from the ads "because he is too cheery for the credit crunch". My wife and I have a joint account. What happens to us? The good news for people with joint accounts is that they effectively enjoy twice the normal level of protection. The compensation scheme will assume the money is split equally between the two account holders, so each person would be eligible for the full £35,000 compensation. In other words, up to £70,000 would be covered. Doesn't all this prove I should put all my savings in a building society? Once viewed as boring, building societies such as the Nationwide have come into their own lately, with many savers seeing them as a safe haven in times of trouble. They are immune from speculative attacks by hedge funds because they are not quoted on the stockmarket.

And the sector is proud of the fact that no member of a building society has lost any of their investment since at least 1945. Also, building societies tend to help their own, with one usually stepping in if another gets into trouble. I thought some building societies were putting money into all sorts of dodgy things? The sector's reputation as safe and unsexy took a blow this month when it emerged that more than a quarter of Derbyshire Building Society's balance sheet was made up of adverse credit and sub-prime loans. Nationwide has seen its lending volume drop by 40% and booked losses of more than £100m on six structured investment vehicles, while more than a quarter of lending by Britannia, the second-biggest society, is in areas such as buy-to-let, credit impaired and "self-cert" loans. What if my money is in the UK arm of an overseas bank? If it is the UK division of a non-European bank, for example ICICI Bank UK, which is owned by one of India's largest financial institutions, the protection is exactly the same as that applying to British-owned banks. What if the parent company is based in Europe? It's slightly more complicated.

EU rules mean all countries in the European Economic Area must have a compensation scheme in place, but in most cases these schemes are less generous than the UK's (France and Italy are the exceptions). However, European banks have the option of joining our scheme to "top up" the level of protection offered, and most reputable European banks with a UK presence have done just that. This means you would end up being entitled to the same amount, but the compensation would be provided by two schemes. Which European banks have topped up? They include ING Direct and Triodos Bank (both with parent companies in the Netherlands), Bank of Ireland (which provides many of the Post Office's savings accounts) and Landsbanki. For a list, log on to fscs.org.uk . How's Barclays faring? Barclays bounced back this week by snapping up some of Lehman Brothers' prime US assets for what many said was a bargain price. But analysts are still concerned about its wholesale funding gap which though less than half the level of RBS or HBOS, is still huge. What about HSBC? HSBC has made huge losses because of the US sub-prime mortgage crisis, but its shares have outperformed its rivals.

This week it became the world's biggest bank by market value - though how long it will retain that title ... Abbey? Abbey is probably fortunate that it was taken over by Spanish banking giant Santander, which is also in the process of swallowing up Alliance & Leicester. Santander is regarded as one of Europe's strongest banks, partly because it has little or no exposure to the US sub-prime mortgage market. But problems in the Spanish property market could drag it down. How about Bradford & Bingley? The former building society and leading buy-to-let lender has endured a savage few months. Its share price was just 25p on Thursday; in April they were worth more than £2. A few days ago, Moody's, the ratings agency, slashed its credit rating. If things carry on like this, Mr Bradford and Mr Bingley will soon be found sitting in a shop doorway, asking passers-by to throw a few coppers into their bowler hats. I'm an HBOS shareholder. How much will I get?

There are nearly two million Brits who hold shares in HBOS, which tumbled from £10 this time last year to 88p in frantic trading before the rescue by Lloyds TSB. Assuming the deal goes ahead, HBOS shareholders will see each share exchanged for 0.83 shares in Lloyds TSB instead. At the time the deal was announced, that worked out as 232p per HBOS share. But the next day, the Lloyds TSB share price dropped to around 230p, so that meant HBOS holders would receive shares worth 190.9p. The next few months will be tortuous as the deal has to be approved. It's entirely possible that in the meantime speculators will drive down Lloyds TSB's share price. HBOS HALIFAX BANK OF SCOTLAND Halifax is a commercial bank in the United Kingdom , one of the trading names of the Bank of Scotland plc which is part of the HBOS Group. Prior to 1997, it was the UK's largest building society, known as the Halifax Building Society. The Halifax is the UK's largest provider of residential mortgages and saving accounts.

It is named after the town of Halifax, West Yorkshire where it retains its headquarters. Its slogan is "Always giving you extra". On 17 September 2007, 'Halifax' became a trading name of Bank of Scotland plc as part of reorganisation of the HBOS Group caused by the HBOS Group Reorganisation Act 2006. Rogue traders allegedly made ï¿½100m from the 17 per cent slump in HBOS shares Revealed: the dirty tricks of rogue traders - 23 March 2008 A hedge fund based in London set up a "dirty-tricks unit" to manipulate share prices and get illicit information on companies in an attempt to make millions on the stock market, an insider has revealed. Leader: HBOS mugging shows that crime pays As the official hunt began for the rogue traders who tried to bring down Britain's biggest mortgage lender, HBOS, The Daily Telegraph can reveal a whistle-blower's account of how a multi-billion pound fund allegedly used illegal tactics to drive down stock prices. Private detectives were allegedly employed to hack into executives' emails and telephone records. Front companies were set up to allow the hedge fund traders to pose as independent researchers or journalists.

Negative information on companies was then distributed to leading investment banks in the hope that rumours would spread and some share prices would fall. The hedge fund, which cannot be named for legal reasons, stood to make millions from "short-selling" the shares as they fell in value. The allegations ï¿½ made in a sworn statement seen by The Daily Telegraph and which has been sent to financial regulators ï¿½ will add to growing concern over the activities of rogue traders in the City. The Financial Services Authority, the City regulator, has begun a criminal investigation to find the trader who allegedly made ï¿½100 million from the 17 per cent slump in HBOS shares on Wednesday. The shares fell after "malicious" rumours were spread in the City about the bank, sparking fears that the price had been illegally manipulated ï¿½ a move described as "the modern day version of bank robbery". FSA investigators are seeking emails sent to traders that are thought to have prompted widespread selling of HBOS shares. They claimed the bank was experiencing difficulties. HBOS suspends 'rogue banker' - 13 May 2007 HBOS has suspended a rogue banker who unilaterally advanced millions of pounds in loans to struggling corporate clients.

The bank has lent much more aggressively than its major rivals over the past few years and the strong line taken suggests it could be concerned about rising levels of bad debt. The suspended banker worked in the turnaround division of HBOS's Reading office, which handles clients that have hit difficult trading or broken their banking covenants. It is understood that he managed a portfolio of loans worth in excess of ï¿½300m and that the bank could easily lose tens of millions of this. A source close to the situation said: "He just over-lent and kept advancing money to clients without authorisation." "Everybody knows he's lost a hell of a lot of money," said another insider. One of the clients is understood to be a struggling airline based in the Isle of Man. In March, when HBOS announced bumper profits for 2006, the one black spot was an increase in bad debts from ï¿½1.6bn to ï¿½1.74bn and a warning that it was "cautious about future trends". The bank's share price fell by 4.6 per cent on the news.

HBOS HISTORY Formation The Halifax was formed in 1853 as the The Halifax Permanent Benefit Building and Investment Society. The idea was thought up in a meeting room situated above The Old Cock Inn close to the original Building Society building. Like all early building societies, the purpose of the Society was for the mutual benefit of local working people. Investors with surplus cash would invest in the society to receive interest, and borrowers could access loans to fund the purchase of a house. Unlike many UK building societies which grew large by acquisitions and mergers, the Society choose an organic form of growth, and proceeded to open branches throughout the UK. By 1913, it was the largest building society in the UK. The first office in London opened in 1924; and the first offices in Scotland in 1928. Halifax Building Society The former headquarters of the Halifax- Trinity Road, Halifax, West YorkshireIn 1928, it merged with Halifax Equitable Building Society, then the second largest building society and was renamed Halifax Building Society. The Society was now five times larger than its nearest rival, with assets of ï¿½47 million.

A new Head Office was built at Trinity Road, Halifax in 1973. The distinguished diamond shaped building was used on marketing material during the 1980s and 90s. Underneath the building is a specially constructed deedstore which is used to store property deeds for an annual charge of ï¿½10. It is computerised and filled with gas to prevent fire. Its importance has diminished in recent years because property data is now kept on a central database kept by Her Majesty's Land Registry. Diversification The Society continued to grow in size throughout the 20th century, remaining the UK's largest building society. The deregulation of the financial services industry in the 1980s, saw the passing of the Building Societies Act 1986 which allowed societies greater financial freedoms, and diversification into other markets. Accordingly the Halifax acquired an estate agents to complement its mortgage business. It also expanded by offering current accounts and credit cards, traditionally services offered by commercial banks. Demutalisation The 1986 Act also allowed building societies to demutualise, and become public limited companies instead of mutually owned organisations, owned by the customers who borrowed and saved with the society.

Although the Abbey National demutualised in 1989, the process was not repeated until the late 1990s, when most of the large societies announced demutalisation plans. In 1995, the Halifax announced it was to merge with the Leeds Permanent Building Society and convert to a plc. The Halifax floated on the London Stock Exchange on June 2, 1997. Over 7.5 million customers of the Society became shareholders of the new bank, the largest extension of shareholders in UK history. HALIFAX plc A high-street branch of the Halifax.As Halifax plc, the new bank was the fifth largest in the UK in terms of market capitalisation. Further expansion took place with the 1996 acquisition of Clerical Medical Fund Managers, a UK life insurance company. In 1999, the Halifax acquired the Birmingham Midshires Building Society and ComparetheLoan. In 2000, Halifax established Intelligent Finance, a telephone and internet based bank. HBOS In 2001, a wave of consolidation in the UK banking market led Halifax to agree a ï¿½10.8 billion merger with the Bank of Scotland.

The new group was named Halifax Bank of Scotland (HBOS) with headquarters in Edinburgh, but retaining both Halifax and the Bank of Scotland as brand names. However in Scotland, Halifax branches were amalgamated with the Bank of Scotland, and the Halifax brand is now only used for branding mortgages and savings products. Halifax branches in the rest of the UK use the Bank of Scotland brand for business banking. In 2006, the opposite occurred when the Bank of Scotland (Ireland), HBOS's main retail bank in the Republic of Ireland, announced that it would be rebranding its retail business as Halifax, citing the Irish public's exposure to Halifax advertising on ITV as among the reasons. The Bank of Scotland name will be retaining for business banking. In 2006, the HBOS Group Reorganisation Act 2006 was passed. The aim of the Act was to simplify the corporate structure of HBOS. The Act was fully implemented on 17 September 2007 and the assets and liabilities of Halifax plc transferred to Bank of Scotland plc. The Halifax brand name will be retained as a trading style, but it no longer exists as a corporate entity.

Halifax Bank of Scotland saw shares dive nearly 20 percent at one point, on March 19, 2008, before recovering as the bank robustly denied rumors of liquidity problems that revived fears over the impact of the global credit crunch. Heads of major British banks met with the governor of the Bank of England following days of market pressure on lenders' stocks. The Bank of England told after the March 20, 2008-meeting that participants had "agreed to continue their close dialogue with the objective of restoring more orderly market conditions." The bank's statement steadied the share price of HBOS after falling steeply in early trading March 19, 2008. IRRESPONSIBLE LENDING TV ADVERTS Halifax pioneered an innovative approach to bank adverts in 2000, when it allowed its staff to star in adverts, singing popular songs with the words changed to reflect financial services products. Halifax worker Howard Brown is the regular star of the adverts. Following the merger with the Bank of Scotland, this practice has continued, with the Bank of Scotland also allowing its staff to take part.

In December 2006, Natalie Webster and four other Halifax colleagues Richard Willoughby, Jilly Ellard, Nicola Roberts and Paul Dudley, flew to Johannesburg to film the 'Halifax remix' of Aretha Franklin's 'Think'. The advert has been on air since February 2007. Another advert filmed stars Thomas Yau from Leeds singing a version of Herman's Hermits 'I'm into Something Good'. This advert has been on air since January 2008. Kulo Luna $billion dollar whale When a pirate whaler kills a small humpback whale, her giant friend sinks the pirate ship to avenge the death, but is itself wounded. The pirates put a price on the whale's head, but an adventurer in an advanced solar powered boat races to beat the pirates and save the wounded animal. A heartwarming action adventure: Pirate whalers V Conservationists, with an environmental message and a $Billion dollars riding on the winner. For release as an e-book in 2016 with hopes for a film in 2018. This website is copyright ï¿½ 1991- 2015 Electrick Publications. All rights reserved.

The bird logo and names Solar Navigator, Utopia Tristar and Blueplanet Ecostar are trademarks ï¿½. The Blueplanet vehicle configuration is registered ï¿½. All other trademarks hereby acknowledged and please note that this project should not be confused with the Australian: 'World Solar Challenge'ï¿½which is a superb road vehicle endurance race from Darwin to Adelaide. Max Energy Limited is an educational charity working hard to promote world peace . Advertising / The Scrappy - TV Tropes The AXE Black Chill commercial gets hate from both men and women, more so from women. Women hate it because the commercial states that women have gotten "hotter" over the years because they have been dressing in less clothing. Men hate the commercial because it stereotypes men as being unable to control themselves when seeing a gorgeous woman (e.g. bumping into people, causing explosions in chemistry experiements, crashing into cars, etc.).

In the UK, pharmacy/beauty chain Boots made a Christmas advertisement using Ernie K Doe's "Here Come the Girls." It was so successful that from then on, the song and slogan were used in most of the chain's advertising, but became unpopular when the original song was replaced with a new, upbeat pop version by girl band Sugababes and the adverts reworked to focus on a recurring group of "girls" in sitcom-style sketches. The adverts were accused of being annoying, unfunny and sexist towards both men and women, and the actresses who appeared in them became Scrappies nationwide, particularly comedienne Barunka O'Shaughnessy, who was usually the leading figure in most of the ads. In 2011 they were voted among the top 20 most annoying commercials in an annual market research study of the advertising industry, and despite Boots' then head of advertising stating that the campaign had a lot more "creative potential", it was dropped and the chain completely re-branded less than a year later. Burger King has had a few over the years: Readers of a certain age may remember their infamous "Where's Herb?" campaign of the mid-1980s.

A kind of advertising Anti-Sue (Herb was a stereotypical nerd, the only man in the U.S. — maybe the world — who hadn't eaten a Whopper ), his campaign was never very successful and issues with a contest where a person who spotted Herb visiting a Burger King would win $5,000 didn't help. (A 16-year old Alabama boy won; BK denied him the prize since he was not the minimum age to participate; his parents complained to their state representative, eventually causing the Alabama State Senate to pass a resolution condemning BK's action.) The "BK TV" commercials from the early 1990s starring Dan Cortese (an MTV host at the time) are memorable for their Totally Radical tendencies. The Burger King Kid's Club was disliked due to its blatant Totally Radical tone. The Burger King had The Burger King as an actual mascot for a time, but he was perceived as extremely creepy , putting him here for some at least . He was retired due to his perceived creepiness. For Canadians, the infamous "Canadian Tire Guy" became so widely reviled and mocked by such satire shows as This Hour Has 22 Minutes that he was replaced in 2006 by different ads.

He was intended to be a friendly, helpful "everyman" character, but he was interpreted as smug and intrusive by the general public. The kids in 1-877 Kars 4 Kids. Never has a jingle for a charity been such Ear Worm Hell. Most viewers feel more sorry for the kids singing it than the ones they're helping. (And the hard rock remake of it was worse.) Cara Confused, a cartoon character who was the face of UK car insurance comparison website Confused.com. Viewers mocked the bizarre appearance of the character (who in turn was based on the company's original logo) and the way the adverts appeared to show her pulling out random items (from microphones to cars to a HOUSE) from under her skirt— not helped by the way the company tried to excuse this by saying the objects came from her "magic pocket" . Viewers also disliked her singing voice— performed by professional West End singer Louise Dearman— and in her later commercials, her chest becoming more defined and noticeably... bouncier , which came off as simply weird rather than attractive.

One of Cara's adverts featuring a cover of "Somebody to Love" by Queen was eventually pulled when it emerged that the commercial was leading people to think Confused.com was a dating site. The campaign was finally dropped and Cara was replaced with a new mascot. In the Howie Long Chevrolet commercials that ran from late 2008 through 2009, Long simply came off as a jerkass talking down to the viewers. The most famous are a trio of ads where Long mocks the drivers of competitive pickup trucks because they are driving trucks that offer features and equipment that the Chevrolet does not. The reactions to these ads (and the whole campaign) in general was so overwhelmingly negative that Long was quickly dismissed, replaced by Tim Allen for the new "Chevy Runs Deep" campaign that is currently in use. Dee Lincoln, founder of the Del Frisco Double Eagle steakhouse chain in Dallas, did her own radio ads - much to the chagrin of radio listeners due to her Fran Drescher-like voice.

(Like Drescher, she wasn't a bad-looking woman in person, but that sadly doesn't translate over radio.) Welsh pop singer Duffy became a Scrappy to viewers all over Britain when she appeared in an infamous and widely mocked advert for Diet Coke. The ad showed her stealing a bicycle and riding through a supermarket while singing a horrible tuneless version of a Sammy Davis Jr hit. Duffy was meant to have been the face of Diet Coke throughout its "Hello You" campaign, but the advert was so poorly received that she was dropped. Domino's Pizza: Andy, a weird puppet-bear thing who totally gained potential consumers' confidence by slacking off at work and yet returning for several more commercials. At least Domino's showed mercy and stopped. For Domino's in the 80's this was the Noid. The character design was intended to be annoying ("Noid", "annoying", get it?) but the designers went a little overboard with a giggling Foil who's voice sounded like a guy sucking helium.

Kenneth Lamar Noid, a mentally-disturbed man, convinced that the character was an attack on him, held the staff of a Domino's in the Atlanta area hostage for five hours on January 30, 1989, but finally surrendered to police. Although, that didn't kill the Noid off—it was Kenneth's suicide in 1995 that did. If an entire ad campaign can be a Scrappy, it's the " 30 Minutes, or It's Free! " deal that Domino's had in the 1980's and early 1990's. People actually liked the campaign, because hey, free pizza... until people starting dying from Domino's drivers trying to beat their thirty-minute time limit. After that, public opinion of the campaign went sour; MAD even had an article that suggested new mascots for companies with bad ideas, including "Reckless Ron the Dangerous Dominos Driver" . Domino's was eventually on the end of a lawsuit that forced then to stop using it. Dear lord, the woman in the notorious HeadOn commercials.

Some viewers truly believe some Evil Genius thought this up, seeing as it may be the only commercial that seems to cause the medical condition its product claims to prevent. Dr. Pepper introduced Dr. Pepper Ten in 2011 as a low calorie soda for men. Their main advertisement featured an obnoxious pitchman who acted out scenes from a faux-action movie, telling female viewers that they couldn't appreciate this soda with its "ten manly calories," ending with a tagline that the soda was "Not for women." Dr. Pepper eventually pulled the ad after negative backlash, reissuing the product with more gender-neutral branding. Erin Esurance was once quite popular, but by 2010 (six years after her debut) she had become pretty unpopular, doing worse than Clippy in a survey of corporate mascots. Oh, she did have fans... the wrong kind, that is. Thanks to her attractive design, she gained a Rule 34 following, with pornographic fanart of her frequently showing up alongside official images on Google, stigmatizing the character and forcing Esurance to get rid of her to avoid association with pornography.

First National Bank (FNB) from South Africa had a series of radio adverts starring 'Steve', a constantly flustered call-centre agent who worked for the woe-fully inept BLEEP! Bank (name is bleeped out like its a curse word, as it's illegal to defame another product in advertising in South Africa). It should be noted that the character did not start out as a scrappy. The adverts were fairly clever in that they had a Myth Arc of sorts with Steve, at first, calling random customers to get them to join Bleep! Bank, only to have them tell him how awesome FNB is, and him eventually secretly going over to FNB while still working at Bleep! Bank and trying to keep it secret from his superiors. Though Steve could reasonably be considered a small pop-culture figure he eventually became a Scrappy for non-FNB clients who found the later adverts extremely condescending towards them. Others were put off by his constant use in radio adverts. When FNB took a break from Steve they had a condescending American narrator extol the virtues of FNB and why clients for other banks foolishly are losing out, which arguably irritated non-FNB clients even more.

Later they tried to revive Steve by making him a flustered call-centre agent again, but that only annoyed FNB clients and fans, who felt that the character had grown and taking him back to square one was stupid. Eventually FNB stopped using him completely. GEICO has a reputation for running even its most popular campaigns into the ground through endless repetition . For example, Peter Pan from GEICO's new "It's What You Do" ad campaign which a still-young Peter attending his class reunion (the class of 1965) and behaving obnoxiously towards his aged former classmates. Specific disdain is typically held for Peter's opening explanation of " Phiiilll! " as he flies over to greet his fellow alumni, mainly because it occurs so early in the commercial with little to no prior warning. GO COMPAAARE! GO COMPAAAARE! Do nothing rash, conserve your cash at GO COMPAAARE! Everyone in the U.K. cheered when Jimmy Carr gave him quite the nutshot in this video.

It was bad enough when the (thankfully fictitious) opera singer Gio Compario was just singing in people's houses; then he was doing it in the Stone Ages, in various countries, in the sky, as a woman... Go Compare actually got the hint about this one, however, so their "Saving the Nation" follow-up campaign has him blown up, tortured, punched or otherwise abused by various celebrities . For instance, Stephen Hawking created a black hole just to suck the spokesperson out of existence . One of these gave him a Sympathy for the Devil moment, portraying him as an Iron Buttmonkey subjected to a ton of physical abuse for just trying to tell people about car insurance. However, much like the audience, the woman he's talking to has clearly lost all sympathy for him. Of course, as bad as Gio was, these guys were even worse, and viewers never got to see them sucked into black holes. (What in the world does opera singing have to do with cash settlements and annuities?) This one has even gone through some Memetic Mutation with parodies like this one .) There are also the spokespeople from the commercials for Golden Corral (the buffet chain, similar to Hometown Buffet).

They always come off as smug and arrogant, and the Golden Corral server even looks and sounds like... Jared Fogle. The rather distinctive-looking Howard Brown used to be the face of the advertising for Halifax (a major UK bank.) He appeared in a series of commercials singing various pop hits with new lyrics about banking. The ads became wildly popular but also attracted a ton of anti-fans who became sick of Brown's face and the awful music. Brown then started taking lesser roles in the ads and the main song was performed by someone else; particular loathing was directed at an ad that featured a fat woman instead. In 2008 it was decided to drop the musical adverts because of the recession, and the Hatedom breathed a sigh of relief. And then they go and make new adverts with particularly loathsome employees "rapping" along to Vanilla Ice. If this is the price of scraping out of recession, well... The Carl's Jr./Hardee's Star. It's like they took that creepy Marshie from Homestar Runner , then made him into a canon attempt to sell fries... Maaaaade from the best stufffffff .

The man coming into the parties in those Heineken commercials enters by greeting foreigners in condescendingly westernized gestures and shows up everyone he sees at whatever they're most talented in. In one commercial, he jumps onstage and decides to show up the band playing the music. In the other, he leaps through a Japanese-style paper door (essentially property damage to the high-class establishment) like it was designed for that. Essentially, he's being as smug as smug can get in front of a number of wealthy and/or important looking people and becomes the center of the party thanks to it. The kid in hello.ie ad. Basically, he stands there teaching a class of adults about how to make savings on their mortgage protection in an extremely condescending manner. Many viewers wanted to punch him through the screen. Honeycomb's furry "Me Want Honeycomb" monsters known as Cravers were the bane of any child growing up in The '90s ; coming close to the Trix Kids in Jerk Sue territory due to their propensity for yelling , stereotypical rebelliousness , and breaking things. An ad for Invisilign (transparent alternative to braces) features twin teenagers.

One gets to wear Invisilign while the other is stuck with regular braces. While The Unfavorite laments her lot in life, her sister gleefully rubs it in, and is shown taking unflattering pictures, stealing her snacks and generally being an unpleasant little monster. The Jell-O Temptations commercials for playing Abusive Parents for laughs. There are groups out there who are calling for boycotts of Kraft products because of how disgusting the commericals are. Keith Stone from the Keystone Light beer commercials. The ads play him up as being every bit as smooth as the beer he's shilling, but he looks and sounds like the sort of dude whose last words will surely be "Hey, hold my beer and watch this!" The Luna Mattress commercials start with the parents of the home talking with a representative. Then, out of nowhere, and since no one in the room asked their daughter comes in and says "I'm going to be a tap dancer when I grow up!" She then taps off... leaving an annoying sound behind. See why it sounds more annoying than cute? Macintosh: The "Mac" of Apple's "Mac and PC" ads, largely due to the Strawman Product nature of the ads.

In the early ads, the Mac guy came across as such a smug and arrogant jerk that it was actually turning people away from Apple computers. Apple responded by attempting to make the Mac guy more likable and the PC guy more of a jerk, but people still find the PC guy to be a lot more tolerable than the Mac guy. The UK version of the ads especially made the Mac guy look like a jerk as they starred the comedy duo Mitchell and Webb, who are known for starring in Peep Show. In the words of Charlie Brooker, "Mitchell plays a repressed, neurotic underdog, and Webb plays a selfish, self-regarding poseur... So when you see the ads, you think, 'PCs are a bit rubbish yet ultimately lovable, whereas Macs are just smug, preening tossers.'" McDonald's: Ronald McDonald may be the bane of childhood obesity activists everywhere, but even he has nothing on Happy , the creepy anthropomorphic Happy Meal. One might imagine that the Uncanny Valley might be the source of his unpopularity, but instead his screeching, slapstick antics are what make you unload a howitzer in his mouth.

Oh, and there tends to be more than one of him in each commercial... Metro PCS has commercials starring a stereotypical Indian guy, who's best described as an Ethnic Scrappy . It also doesn't help that one Metro PCS ad continually states "Period Power" . The Miller Lite commercials with the "Man Up" slogan. Basically, the commercials are supposed to indicate that drinking the beer indicates manliness and drinking any other light beer means you're an unmanly wimp. In reality, however, the Miller drinkers come off as smug jerks and the "other" brand drinkers come off as Camp Gay stereotypes . Jeff, Dave and especially Brian representing MoneySupermarket.com. Following a campaign with vague similarities to the aforementioned Go Compare adverts, the three have been able to pull off anything they want purely because they used the site and "feel epic". Brian is the worst, strutting around Vegas and tossing a coin into a slot machine which spills out winnings, entering backstage to a performance, which he then hijacks, completely ignoring his family. The hammy voiceover doesn't help at all. Ms.

Brown from the M&M commercials, an annoying Smug Snake who has willingly gotten the Red M&M eaten in a way that is very reminiscent of a rape . The "Puppymonkeybaby" for Mountain Dew: Kickstart that debuted during Super Bowl 50. It's a disturbing-looking hellspawn with the torso and tail of a monkey, the face of a dog, and the legs of a human infant, and moves around in an unnatural, jittering way while chanting its own name. It received tons of social media buzz when it was first revealed, the vast majority of which was people complaining about how creepy the thing was. Halloooo! Frank Walker from National Tiiiiles wants to know why he's hated by every Australian with a radio and is still somehow in business. Nationwide Insurance has " The World's Greatest Spokesperson In The World ", a guy wearing a telephone on his jacket who is literally able to do anything. He is totally aware of how awesome he is (or how awesome he is supposed to be, at least) and is not afraid to brag about it.

Strangely, the customers he addresses are only impressed by his gimmicks ( Impossible Shadow Puppets to represent bundling, disappearing into thin air to demonstrate "vanishing deductible", etc) and are never shown actually buying the insurance. What about that unsettlingly happy family from the Netflix commercials when first introducing the Instant Queue? How many Netflix customers wanted to switch to Block Buster Total Access after seeing one or two of those commercials? The 2014 NFL Shop commercials featuring a family with mixed team loyalties has been gaining vitrol from NFL fans. Not so much on general principle of a mixed loyalty family, but because the kids who defected did so for seemingly trivial reasons; a daugther became a Dallas Cowboys fan after a chance meeting with Emmitt Smith and a son became a Pittsburgh Steelers fan after eating a sandwich named after Ben Roethlisberger. Hallie Eisenberg — or, as people liked to call her at the end of The '90s , the Pepsi Girl. The primary gimmick of her ads was her extreme little-girl cuteness being undercut by her suddenly speaking in a tough guy voice (Joe Pesci's in the original ad) when she couldn't get a Pepsi.

Not bad once, but as with most ads in which kids doing benignly unkiddy things is the gimmick, it got old fast. The children in pretty much any of the Pillsbury Toaster Strudel commercials. They pretty much act like smug brats while going about bragging how superior their toaster pastries are to Kellog's Pop Tarts. The worst has to be the little brother who once convinced of how great the strudel is...takes his sister's entire breakfast after she said she'd share with him. As well as the unseen mom who holds watching children eating strudel in the most pretentious sort of awe imaginable. Currently in northeastern New Jersey (particularly in Hudson County) there are endless ads for the "Planet Honda" car dealership in Jersey City, featuring the most stereotypically annoying, loudmouthed car dealer guy, who MUST SCREAM EVERY WORD LIKE THIS!!! Kia has the similarly loudmouthed Jim Sipala, who ends every radio commercial with how he wants to see ya in a Kia . Progressive's Flo. She's on constantly, and her voice is very grating on the ears. She started off being rather popular, to the point of becoming the company's mascot.

However, she quickly began to grate on people's nerves. A large part of it too is the audience's annoyance to her unending perkiness at all times, having literally no life outside of Progressive (as we see inside her home), and "perfect hair every time" . The fact that her hair, makeup, and even expression hardly ever change, also puts her in the Uncanny Valley , so that doesn't help. Alternately, you have a much purer example in the form of the Auto Insurance Box. While Flo at least had a following (which may still exist, albeit in lessened numbers), the box was unpopular from day for being such a narcissistic, arrogant douchebag. Even worse, Progressive became well aware of how the fans feel about him and cranked his personality and popularity In-Universe Up to Eleven , putting him into unfortunate territory. Stuffies ; the toy may have been kind of novel, but the repetitive and annoying tongue twister spoken by the kids on the commercials ("How much stuff can I stuff in my Stuffie till my Stuffie stuffed enough stuff?") likely had a lot of parents wanting to tell them where they could stuff it.

Marcus Rivers, the PlayStation Portable Spokesman, who was described generously by Jim Sterling as a "flapping gargoyle". Given he was dropped about a month after he was introduced, clearly Sony got the message. from Coronation Street and some comedy duo not seen on TV since The '80s is less annoying, but only slightly. Scion released a series of commercials where Zeus praised its upcoming lineup of cars. Unfortunately, they decided to portray Zeus as a lazy slacker straight out of a Seth Rogen movie who refers to himself as "the god of awesome" and sings using AutoTuning . This turned what was obviously an attempt at creating a new Memetic Badass into an obnoxious and self-obsessed jerk. The Six Flags old guy midget as explained here .

Citizens of the greater Los Angeles area may be familiar with a certain mattress salesman for Sit'n'Sleep Mattress Center that screams, in the most annoying voice possible, the phrases "You're killing me, Larry!" and "We'll beat anyone's advertised price or YOUR mattress is FREEEEEEEE!!!111!", the latter being particularly stupid because the emphasis is on "free" but why would they EVER give it to you for free if the advertised price is more than 0? Sprint recently hired Paul Marcarelli, Verizon's "Can You Hear Me Now" guy. However, people consider him a traitorous douche. The guys in the Staples commercials that yells "WOW! THAT'S A LOW PRICE!" State Farm: From State Farm, there's this creepy looking mix of Tom Cruise and a mannequin whose only purpose is to follow a group of people around in hopes that they do something sweet, charming or wholesome so that he can pull a Fourth Wall Greeting and talk about how great State Farm is, all the while implying that using State Farm is the cause of all the good things that happened to this group. This guy always comes off as an annoying, arrogant, Jerkass .

Thankfully, these ads have stopped airing. There was another State Farm ad that no one seemed to like. The ad opens with a guy and his girlfriend, standing by his crashed car, with her endlessly bitching in his ear. He drops the "Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there!" jingle, and the agent pops in. His girlfriend chimes in, "... with a new boyfriend." The guy turns into a slightly taller, shirtless, allegedly hotter guy. He then does the same thing, "... with a new girlfriend," and she turns into a slightly taller, slightly skinnier, slightly sluttier girl. She then starts to bitch about how "I was perfect the way I was." The Double Standard of her complaining about being "upgraded," right after she did the same thing, had everybody complaining about The Unfair Sex . The Talking Hat in the Steak N' Shake ads, along with the H.H. Gregg Ad (as in, the character is ACTUALLY a rolled up advertisement) are both characters who try to be lovable, friendly, and witty. They tend to get on peoples nerves with their fast paced talking style, however.

Not surprisingly, both companies use the same ad agency, and one of them, if not both, is changing over to a new agency based on how ill-received the ads have been. Jared Fogle from the Subway ads always gave off this vibe. While it is pretty remarkable that he lost a ton of weight while eating their sandwiches (in addition to the actual dieting and exercising he was no doubt also doing), some appreciable level of charisma and appeal is needed to make an effective pitchman, and those were qualities Mr. Fogle unfortunately simply did not possess. Subway even had Peter Griffin issue a Take That to Jared after he stopped plugging for them. Then came the revelation in 2015 that he was a child molester, killing whatever positive opinions the general public still had about him and making it even easier for the rest to hate his guts. The monkey from Subway Canada deserves a mention, mainly because it has nothing to do with the company, and it's very ugly . Carly Foulkes, also known as the "T-Mobile Girl" comes off as a Purity Sue in most of her commercials, paired up with an incompetent owner of an inferior phone service, before they're informed of the superiority of T-Mobile.

More recent commercials abandon this and simply have Foulks in a more Ms. Fanservice role clad in skin tight leather riding a motorcycle. Riley Thomas Stewart's character in the 2010 Toyota Highlander ad campaign. To some (like this Cracked article's writer ) he's a smug Spoiled Brat . Airing around 2010-2011, the adverts featured Riley calling people/his parents "lame", "dorky" or a "geek family" on the horrendous basis that they're driving older or not as "classy" cars instead of the Toyota Highlander, and ending the commercial with the phrase, "Just because you're a parent doesn't mean you have to be lame". Needless to say, most people couldn't stand the spoiled, materialistic, entitled twerp's attitude towards his parents or shallow way of judging people. The Trix Rabbit tends to come across as The Woobie . It's the kids who become scrappies due to the severe Moral Dissonance of them never letting him have any Trix.

It's not just them not letting him have any; at least once, they outright stole cereal from him that he bought for himself legitimately, as in with his own money. Similarly, they've been known to seek him out to rub it in his face he can't have any Trix. Aaron Priceman a.k.a. "Mr. Caffeine", who hosted Ubisoft 's press conference at E3 2011. Virtually everyone hated his schtick and considered it the low point of the entire expo. Wendy's: The old lady that yelled "Where's the Beef?" was a funny joke that got old quickly. There's even a reference on The Simpsons where it is used as an example for the best way to get rid of an annoying advertisement. From Wendy's came the two guys eating Frosties, who suddenly take note of its texture and declare "something that's not a solid or a liquid can only be a soquid!" ( apparently they never heard of the word "semisolid" ) along with dubbing the spoon the frosty spoon, or "fpoon" and acting like this was a huge discovery on par with the cure for cancer.

Mercifully, Wendy's got the memo and these guys vanished without a trace after only two ads. Wendy's first post-Dave Thomas mascot was Mr. Wendy, "Wendy's Unofficial Spokesman," an annoying twit who would scream insults at people eating non-Wendy's food. Occasionally, he'd be chased away by embarrassed Wendy's employees in, presumably, a feeble attempt at meta humor. This campaign was so ill-received, it was actually blamed for a significant dip in Wendy's sales . Mr. Wendy was retired in November 2004, less than a year after his introduction. The beer commercials featuring the super-snarky female bartender mocking patrons for their skinny jeans, man-bags and tramp-stamp tattoos. Maybe she's on to something about these things being undignified, but she should have the sense to know that acting like a condescending bitch to her customers - whose tips she depends on for her livelihood - is not a very smart thing to do. Several columns by Dave Barry concern the ads he hates the most, and later the ads his readers hate the most.

Some examples: "The Absolut woman, who looks at you as though you are the world's largest ball of underarm hair, and says, "When I said vodka, I meant Absolut". I bet she must be real fun at parties. "Psst! Come on, we're all going to spit into that Absolut woman's drink!" "Those ads in which two incredibly smug 11-year-old girls urge you not to smoke, making you want to inhale a pack of unfiltered Camels out of spite ." "Radio car commercials wherein the dealer SHOUTS AT YOU AS THOUGH YOU ARE AN IDIOT and then reads, in very muted tones, what sounds like the entire U.S. tax code." Perhaps a more obscure example would be Dr. Rabbit, an anthropomorphic rabbit dentist appearing in several animated educational children's videos on oral hygiene released by Colgate to advertise their products to younger audiences. Albeit he isn't as egregious or notorious an example as others listed, Dr. Rabbit is infamous for his overblown obsession with cavity prevention and the campiness of his movies, mainly with older viewers, ascending to notoriety as a popular YouTube Poop meme.

The Spongmonkeys from the Quiznos commercials. The horrifyingly ugly (and not the Ugly Cute kind, AT ALL) offspring of the Klasky-Csupo "SSF" logo and deformed, radiated rats, they also sing a HORRIBLE song about how much they like Quizno's subs. Second US equity firm in approach for Creston - Telegraph Media and Telecoms Second US equity firm in approach for Creston Creston, the marketing conglomerate whose ad agency created celebrity gardener Diarmuid Gavin’s TV ads for Morrisons, has received an expression of interest in a buyout from its biggest shareholder. By Juliette Garside 9:56PM BST 05 Oct 2008 Cartesian Capital Group, a US private equity firm which has built a holding in Creston of just over 10pc, is understood to have written to the board declaring its interest. Creston is already under offer from another, un-named, American private equity group, and discussions are understood to be advanced. A source close to the talks said Cartesian, which is being advised by Hawkpoint Partners, had not indicated a price.

The independent non-executives, including Creston’s chairman David Marshall and Virgin Media executive Malcolm Wall, have told Cartesian that they will not engage in talks until they receive an indicative offer. Cartesian is thought to have ruled out further discussions until its rival makes a firm bid. The talks are for a management buyout led by founder and chief executive Don Elgie, at a price thought to be between 80p and 90p a share, which would value Creston at £40m. Its current market capitalisation is £26m. Creston’s house bank, Barclays, is among a club of lenders looking to finance the deal. If the loan can be raised, it is likely to be in place by the end of this week. With a turnover of £81m and pre-tax profits last year of almost £15m, Creston’s holdings include ad agency Delaney Lund Knox Warren (DLKW) and pollster ICM Group. DLKW is perhaps best known for plucking Howard Brown from obscurity to star in the Halifax ads. A Creston buyout could be a prelude to consolidation within the raft of small marketing conglomerates listed on the London exchanges.

Hit by the de-rating of media stocks, these companies have seen their acquisition-fuelled growth stall, and analysts now see a need for consolidation between the holding groups. Creston confirmed in a statement last month that a “possible offer has been received from a private equity firm which intends… to offer senior positions and equity participations” to Mr Elgie and other senior members of the management team. Directors and staff control some 30pc of the stock, and any buyout is unlikely to happen without their consent.

Question: Howard Brown fronted which bank's tv adverts until 2008?
Answer: Halifax